


message in shadow

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Child Abuse, Dark!Charles, Gen, Mutilation, Past Abuse, Psychological Trauma, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 18:33:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	message in shadow

title: message in shadow  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)**ninemoons42**  
word count: approx. 1410  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, Sharon Xavier, Raven Darkholme, Emma Frost  
rating: R  
notes: Written for [](http://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**trope_bingo**](http://trope-bingo.dreamwidth.org/). Prompt: wingfic [for the free space]. My card is [here](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/215352.html).

  
Erik’s memories of religious instruction are hazy at best - but yes, perhaps he did hear something about angels, about their categories and hierarchies, because there is something about this situation that he can _know_ : angels as instruments of G-d’s will. Angels as envoys of knowledge and of challenge and of purification.

Angels as harbingers of destruction.

He thinks of flaming swords, now, and of overwhelming strength, as Charles stirs and makes his slow way towards wakefulness.

That _something_ has happened to Charles during the night - that is indisputable. Erik knows this because yesterday they had been reluctant to return to the cheap motel room with its two beds, because last night they had been out walking until well past midnight. Tracing a large circle with the motel at its center, rambling, talking about important things and frivolous ones. He remembers the buzz from the beer they’d drunk at dinner - watery and wan though the drinks had been. He remembers the pleasant burn of a long and aimless and enjoyable walk, in the company of one Charles Xavier.

Most importantly, he remembers responding to Charles’s sleepy murmur of “Good night” as they’d turned in. He remembers being lulled reluctantly into sleep by Charles’s slow, steady breaths.

Charles in this sunlight is a far, _far_ cry from the Charles who’d walked with him last night.

With every sighing breath, with every quick twitch, Charles’s entire body stirs. Flexion, extension, muscle movement, terrible unexpected beautiful addition: wings.

And Charles in and of himself is already extraordinary, very nearly unique in this world. He is a man with the ability to read minds - to influence them, to understand them. So perhaps it’s not a surprise that his wings, unexpected as they are, are themselves a deviation from the “angelic” norm.

Angels, in Erik’s very limited and very theoretical experience, are supposed to have wings like those of birds. Eagles’ wings, perhaps, as passages from the holy books have described them in visions. There are feathers, and they might be made of fire or of night or of lightning. Angels might have two of those feathered wings, or six, or perhaps even more; he’s not entirely clear on what he can remember of the teachings. There had been so little time to survive in the ghetto, and later in the camps.

In stark contrast to this faded knowledge, however, here is Charles in a perfectly ordinary and narrow and lumpy bed, sleeping on his side, with great dark wings like those of a bat’s or of a dragon’s sprouting from his back.

Erik knows little about angels, but on the topic of devils he thinks he might know something more: monsters, and makers of monsters.

“I sincerely hope,” Charles mutters as he suddenly struggles awake, “that you are not going to call me a monster. Surely you know me better than that, Erik.”

“And surely you know, Charles, that we are monsters in and of ourselves, were we to look within the little human minds of the people we nominally work with.” Erik sighs, for show, and moves to sit on his bed.

“I don’t want to talk about that right now,” Charles says. Irritation creeps into the lines in his face, fleetingly - there and gone, replaced by consternation. “I think we have rather more pressing matters to look into.”

As Charles sits up, the wings ripple and shift and rearrange, folding in upon themselves, and Erik is left blinking and speechless at the strangeness of it. Spread out, Charles’s bat-wings cover a lot of space; pulled in, they might as well be tidy bundles of bone and membrane tucked right up against Charles’s pale skin.

“Starting with: _what do I do with these_ ,” Charles says. He is looking over his shoulder, peering curiously at his wings at rest. “I can certainly block people from seeing them, but it is certainly an inconvenience to have to tear up my clothes just to accommodate them.”

Erik stares at him, then, feeling truly surprised, caught completely off his guard. “Aren’t you forgetting the more important question?”

“What is the more important question?”

“ _How_ did you even acquire wings in the first place? Is this, perhaps, your secondary - ability?” He thinks about Schmidt’s - Shaw’s - right-hand woman, the one who’d gone after his memories, who’d changed into shimmering strong crystal.

“Emma Frost wishes she could be like this,” Charles snaps, suddenly.

Erik reaches for all of the metal in the vicinity, prepares himself for a fight.

For a long, incandescent, terrible moment, Charles looks _furious_ : and Erik feels cold fear settle in his belly, icy clammy threads in his mind. “Charles,” he says, half-placating, half in warning.

“To answer your question,” Charles says at last. He’s sitting calmly on the bed, once again, and this time he’s completely facing Erik. The anger is gone, but it leaves ugly shadows in Charles’s face, leaves deep furrows around his downturned mouth. “I cannot be surprised that I have these wings, Erik. I’ve been waiting for them to reappear for a very long time.”

“Reappear,” Erik echoes, warily.

“Do you want me to tell you these things or do you want me to show you?”

An easy answer to give: “Stay out of my head, Charles.”

“You do know I can’t do that, any more than you can stop being aware of this whole planet’s magnetic fields.”

“Point,” Erik says after a while. He will concede many things if conceding means he can get to the bottom of this deepening mystery. “Tell me.”

“Let’s just say, I was born with my abilities. I have never known a time when I was without - this,” and Charles taps his forehead with his fingers. The strange twists in the lines of his face are at odds with his sleep-mussed hair, which is still sticking out in every possible direction. “And I have never known a time when I did not know pain from my wings. My mother was not exactly fond of them. I’ve been bound and I’ve been cut open and I’ve been burned, because she wanted these _gone_.”

Is it Erik’s imagination that forces him to think back on the stink of charred flesh? Is it Charles’s projections? Horror wells up in his heart. The idea of a child being _mutilated_ very nearly unmans him.

Charles continues, implacable: “Every time my wings would grow back, but every time they were smaller and smaller - and one day I woke up expecting them to reappear, and they did not. A few years of respite.” He smiles, but there is no warmth in it at all. “My mother could bear to look me in the eyes again, for the year or two that was left to her.

“Perhaps it’s been ten years, perhaps less. Time enough for me to steal what advantages I could. But there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been holding my breath, waiting to wake up with these.”

“Raven knows,” Erik says, mind racing, trying to keep up.

“Of course she knows. She knew from the very first night we met. She held me through the long nights of being afraid. She took care of me and of my wounds - the years of scars and phantom pain. If it hadn’t been for her, I would have tried to destroy myself - torn between wanting my wings and being repulsed by them. She told me that she would have me just as I truly was.” Charles sighs. “I am just glad I saw the other side of _that_ coin soon enough.”

Erik banishes the images from his mind - a blue-skinned girl next to a winged man - and focuses on Charles once again. Charles, who has let the wings partway out: they are wrapped around his shoulders with the leading edges crossed in front, just at hip level. “Are you going to - get rid of them?”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“I will hide them from others but I will not hide from myself. I’m past that now. And I will not hide from you,” Charles says.

Erik hears the power in those words, and nods. “I would not ask that from you.”

The silence that ensues is broken only from moment to moment by the rustling of the great wings.

“...Thank you,” Charles says.

Erik nods, once, and _admires_ the other man.  



End file.
